


Paralyzed

by modxminty



Series: Shadowhunters angst oneshots [1]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Alec Lightwood Has Anxiety, Angst, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Heavy Angst, M/M, Mild Blood, Minor Character Death, No Fluff, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-20 02:34:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14251215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/modxminty/pseuds/modxminty
Summary: "Stop it." Alec mumbled, putting more distance between himself and his boyfriend. He didn't want his pity right now, he just wanted to be left alone. Clearly, that wasn't going to happen, as Magnus spoke again.“Alec, sweetheart, somebody died.” Magnus said, and that was all it took for Alec's carefully crafted walls to shatter around him, cutting his body with the pieces that rained down on him.“You don't need to remind me,” he snapped. “I was there, I watched it happen.”





	Paralyzed

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to point out any grammatical/spelling errors that you find so I can fix them.

Alec stumbled through the door of the loft, his body heavy and his heart hurting. He had half a mind to drop his bow by the door when he couldn't bring himself to put it on its hook, to prevent him from lugging it through the house. Legs weak, he shuffled through to the living room, his body giving out on him as he all but collapsed on the couch. He could faintly hear the sound of a door opening and footsteps approaching, but he didn't acknowledge it. He fished his stele out of the pocket of his gear jacket before he shrugged it off, tossing it haphazardly onto the back of the couch as he pulled the bottom of his shirt up, tracing the familiar shape of the iratze into his skin and letting the healing feeling skin into him, doing nothing to ease the tension that held his body in a death grip that steadily increased as he set down the now blood smeared device.

“Alexander?” he finally registered Magnus, who had clearly been trying to get his attention for several minutes, when he laid a hand slowly onto his arm. He pulled it back slightly when Alec visibly flinched, concern pulling at his features. “What happened?” 

Alec shook his head, eyes trailing down to the harsh spray of blood across his shirt that was, unfortunately, not his own, but instead the blood of an innocent Shadowhunter who didn't have the chance Alec had to go home to someone, not anymore. His chest tightened, pulling harshly on his already deteriorating emotions. He could feel them drain out of his body like the blood he had lost, the type of wound a rune wouldn't fix. One that laid deep into his heart and etched itself there in a permanent scar, a new addition to his ever growing collection, and he couldn't help the selfish wish that it was him, lying dead in the institute's infirmary instead of the kid he was supposed to watch out for.

“Alexander?” Magnus tried again, his frustration at the lack of response starting to leak through the cracks of his concern. “Darling, what happened? What's wrong?” 

Again, Alec couldn't say anything, he simply hung his head and let his grief finally wash over him, his shoulder shaking harshly, but no tears falling. He had long since run out, his mind blank and void of any and all emotions he should possess. He could faintly feel Magnus wrapping an arm around him, but it felt distant, like it wasn't there, like he wasn't there. He forced himself to stop shaking, rolling his shoulders back and standing up suddenly. His legs felt weak, like they couldn't hold his weight anymore, but he didn't let that show. Instead, he gave Magnus an acknowledging nod and turned to walk out of the room, tossing a quiet and quick response of “I need to get out of these clothes” over his shoulder as he moved away. It wasn't entirely a lie, he knew that. He desperately wanted to get out of his clothes, to wash away the blood of a man he had once known, had fought beside, that was now staining his skin. 

He stripped down quickly and stepped into the shower, letting the water run down his body until it stopped coming back red. In all his years as a Shadowhunter, Alec had become familiar with the concept of death. He saw it first hand, prevented it, had caused it. He had held the hand of many grieving parents as they were told their children wouldn't be coming home that night, wouldn't be coming home ever. It was his job as head of the institute to report to the clave when Shadowhunters from his institute died, to tell them how it happened and watch as the friends and family of the person broke down. Years of watching people die had left him so emotionally paralyzed he was lucky he could feel anything at all anymore. He shook the thoughts from his head, scrubbing his body with enough force that he needed another iratze once he stepped out, drying his hair hard enough to pull bits of it out, yet he still couldn't shake the overwhelming feeling of defeat that hung over his body like a blanket, harsh and heavy and impossible to escape. He emerged in entirely new clothing, water still dripping slightly from his hair he couldn't find the motivation to finish drying, and stepped out into the living room where his anxious looking boyfriend sat, clearly waiting for an explanation Alec found himself not ready to give. 

“I called Isabelle,” Magnus said quietly once Alec had sat down next to him, a good foot of space in between them. “She told me what happened.” Of course she did, Alec thought bitterly, she was probably just as worried about him as Magnus was. “Alexander, I am so sorry.” 

“He was sixteen, Magnus.” Alec said quietly, his eyes locked on his hand that merely two hours earlier had been holding the arm of a child begging him to tell his mother he loved her as demon blood poisoned his body. Alec had to be forcefully removed from the infirmary after the boy passed, unwilling to leave him alone even then. 

“Are you okay?” Magnus asked softly. 

He shook his head, brushing off the other man's concerns. “Don't worry about it.” 

“I'm your boyfriend, Alexander,” he said. “It's my job to worry.” 

“You shouldn't.” Alec said quietly. He felt a sudden, unexpected jolt of horror and overwhelming sadness sweep over him through his parabatai bond, signaling that Jace had officially learned the fate of the kid he had been on mission with a few hours prior. 

“Darling,” Magnus tried, but Alec shut him down. 

“Don't worry about it, Magnus,” he said, his voice still and flat, none of his emotions dating to poke through into his speech. If there was one thing he refused to bit have control over, it was the things he said. “I'm fine.” 

“No, you're not.” Magnus sighed, reaching out to grab Alec's arm. 

He pulled away harshly, shoving himself to his feet to get farther away from the other man. “Stop worrying.” 

Magnus either ignored him or didn't hear him, as he stood up and took a couple of hesitant steps towards Alec. “Why didn't you call for backup? You know Izzy or Jace would have been there in a heartbeat, they would have helped you.” 

“I thought we had it covered.” Alec said, shrugging his shoulders and shoving his hands into his pockets. 

"You could have even called me, Alexander." He said, taking another hesitant step forwards, and Alec took one back. 

"Stop it." Alec mumbled, putting more distance between himself and his boyfriend. He didn't want his pity right now, he just wanted to be left alone. Clearly, that wasn't going to happen, as Magnus spoke again.

“Alec, sweetheart, somebody died.” Magnus said, and that was all it took for Alec's carefully crafted walls to shatter around him, cutting his body with the pieces that rained down on him. 

“You don't need to remind me,” he snapped. “I was there, I watched it happen.” 

Magnus was clearly taken back by Alec's explosion, but he didn't back down. “Why didn't you call someone, Alec? You keep putting yourself into these dangerous situations, and I can't understand why.” 

“Because it's my job!” Alec shouted, his body still with tension that he couldn't shake off. “Its my fucking job to go out there and risk my life! You knew that when you signed up for this, so save yourself the trouble and stop worrying!” 

“It could have been you that died, Alexander!” Magnus shouted back, his eyes glassy as tears threatened to spill, desperately trying to get through to his boyfriend. “That was a suicide mission and you know it! You knew it before you even stepped out there!”

“People die in war! Why am I the exception?!” Alec practically screamed, throwing his hands around in anger. His voice dropped, thick with unshed tears as he continued to speak, filling the silence of Magnus’s shock at his outburst. “I was raised on the knowledge that I was going to die. That one day, probably soon, I would be the one they brought back in a body bag. That my parents would probably outlive me, that my siblings would. Magnus, I'm fucking twenty three! I'm lucky I made it this far in my life! I go on these suicide mission because it's better that it's me than someone who still has time on their hands!” 

Magnus was silent for a long time, nothing filling the air between them that was heavy with emotions of Alec's confession. Magnus knew that Shadowhunters started out young, that they knew for their entire lives that they were going to die, and he wondered what that felt like comparison to his own life. He had the advantage of time on his side, could drag things out for as long as he wanted them to go, but Alec didn't have that. And no matter how abruptly, how harshly he was just reminded of it, it was something important for him to realize. Everything about Alec, from the way he moved to the way he talked, was so rushed, so intense. He kissed him every time like it was going to be the last time he did, held him with more love than he had ever thought possible in one embrace, and he was suddenly violently reminded of why. 

Nothing about the life of a Shadowhunter was guaranteed, no day promised to them like it was to him. They lived to shove as much into their early life as possible, as much experience and emotion as they could in each simple action of their day, because they were promised an early death. That was why, no matter how slow Magnus tried to make things, Alec always pushed and pushed so it was going as fast as possible. Living forever was hard, Magnus would never say it wasn't, but it was infinatessimaly less than the pain of never living at all. His thoughts drifted briefly to Max, the smallest Lightwood, who at nine years old had had his first brush with death and dealt with it like it was expected, because it had been. Even at such a young age, Max was prepared to die, had come to grips with the thought, and the thought flipped Magnus’s heart painfully in his chest, and his thoughts moved again to Alec. When he was nine years old, Alec had been ready to die too. He knew for sure, as Alec had told him, that he would have laid down his life if need be before he had even hit double digits yet. In every way that mattered, Alec was still practically a child, so young and with so much potential, yet he was weighed down with enough sadness that even someone of his age should never have. 

“Do you know,” Alec finally said, dragging Magnus from the pit of thoughts he's been digging himself further and further into. “Why Downworld bars don't turn away underage Shadowhunters?” When Magnus shook his head he let out a laugh, sharp and humorless, and the choked, broken sound of it almost made Magnus break down right there. “Because half of us don't make it until we're twenty one.” 

Alec could remember the first time he'd been to a bar. He'd been fifteen, and his father had taken him out to celebrate him killing multiple demons on his own that day. The bartenders didn't even bat an eye at this kid, very obviously underage, who walked in and ordered a beer. He had kept going back, his sibling dragging him around insisting that he needed to live a little, the underlying meaning of their words weighing over all of them all of their lives. 

“One of these days, you're gonna be sitting here at the end of the day, and I'm not gonna walk through the door.” 

“Don't,” Magnus sobbed, moving forwards and grabbing onto Alec's hand tightly. “Don't talk like that, please.” 

Alec gently reached forwards with his unoccupied hand, swiping the tears away from his cheek where they were now freely falling. He couldn't help but feel that he'd be crying too, if his body could still manage even that amount of emotion. “It's the truth, Magnus. I love you, I love you so much that it hurt sometimes, but someday soon I'm not gonna be here anymore.” 

Magnus fell forwards, wrapping his arms around Alec as he sobbed into his chest. He felt the Shadowhunter’s arms wrap around him, pull him closer to him, and he cried harder. Alec pressed a kiss to the top of his head, sighing lightly. This was a conversation they had to have, he knew that, but that didn't make what he was saying any easier. Magnus’s entire body was shaking with his sobs and it was getting increasingly harder to hold him up, so he lowered them gently down onto the couch. Magnus pulled him tighter to him, and he hid his face in his shoulder. He felt a tear slip from his eye, slide down his cheek, and drip from his face onto the shoulder of Magnus’s shirt. It was the first time he had cried in months. Nothing else came, just the one tear, but it still happened, and it meant more to Alec than sobbing out his emotions ever would. 

“I love you,” he whispered into Magnus’s hair. “I'm sorry.” 

Magnus shook his head, burying himself further into Alec's chest. “I love you too. I'm so sorry, Alexander, I'm so sorry.” 

And Alec simply pulled him closer, letting him cry out all his thoughts, and prayed to whatever higher power there may be that he'd still get to come home tomorrow. One more day, for now, was the best he could hope to get.

**Author's Note:**

> Here are some of the thoughts that were fluttering around my head recently. Magnus isn't the only one with a hard life guys.
> 
> Comment your opinions please I crave validation


End file.
